


And Maybe Halfway Through It Had More To Do With Me Killing Him Than It Ever Did Protecting Myself

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abusive Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider, Abusive Parents, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Murder, Other, Past Child Abuse, Psychological Trauma, Trauma, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-07 22:37:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20824955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Dave has a few dreams that have a lot to do with the past, and is paranoid about a few things to do with himself.





	And Maybe Halfway Through It Had More To Do With Me Killing Him Than It Ever Did Protecting Myself

**Author's Note:**

> I'm titling this: I don't know how to deal with trauma so I'm projecting it a hundred times worse than it was onto a fictional character.   
Title is a lyric from the song Father by The Front Bottoms.

You’re hungry. You’re starving, actually. But you’re too small to reach the higher up cabinet and there’s nothing in the lower ones or the fridge. The past few days you’ve grown weaker and have been in more pain. You’ve been crying to your brother about it, while he eats take out he got on his way home, and he’s only been sparing enough for you to barley live off of. 

He says that you need to learn to survive, that this is a test, that he would never really let you starve to death. But you can feel your ribs and you can feel doubt and terror creep into your skin. You barley manage to scoot over a chair, and you climb on top of the counter, the sticky padding on the bottom of your onsie feets barley keeping you on the wood. 

You’re dizzy, and it’s hard to stand. You hold onto the handle tight suddenly, about to lose your balance, but it swings open, and you let out a brief and horrified scream as you feel yourself become weightless, seeing the box of crackers you were hoping to reach right before you hit the floor, your shades skidding across the tiles and something in your head cracking and letting out a burning, throbbing pain. 

Your bro sprints into the room as you lose consciousness, weak and close to death. Somehow you remember surviving this, even though he never took you to the hospital. 

You’re in a different dream now, but it’s still the same sleep. 

You find yourself, just a few years older, covered with bruises. You’re on the roof, and your brother just hit the final blow that made you know you were done for. This was the first time Bro fought you, and probably the most vivid one you remember. Because it certainly wasn’t the last. 

You’re just feet from the edge, on your knees with no weapon in sight. You see Bro walk closer to you, unable to make out any expression except for a cold, chilling determination in how he holds his mouth. You can’t scream for help, the old lady might here you and call the police, so Bro made sure to put duct tape over your mouth before throwing you out here, tossing a sword at you, and saying to fight. 

He kicks you backwards, and you’re on your back, You feel something on your stomach, because he knows your ribs are still broken, and you feel a foot push down. Suddenly, you’re hurling, but you can’t open your mouth, you can’t get it out. No, oh God, you’re choking, aren’t you? It’s in your throat and coming out of your nose, and you’re kicking and shaking and crying your eyes out, watching your vision start to fade out, you know you’re close to death but you can’t do anything, and he chooses not to do anything. 

You could never remember what happened after that. But it doesn’t matter, because now you’re in your next dream. 

Suddenly, you’re you. You’re current you, you’re in your apartment, but you’re not really you. You’re watching yourself from the sidelines. 

You know what you’re about to do, and you know it’s a bad idea but you need this. This is something you’ve craved and longed for ever since you really realized how fucked up he was, and how much he deserved what you deserved to give to him. 

You go back in time. The child of the house is unconscious on the floor because of Bro, and he wouldn’t wake up for two weeks if you remember correctly. 

Bro looks at you with cold, calculating eyes, and a grin that held nothing but sadism, and a sick satisfaction that event though it’s twenty years later, you’re finally really fighting back. 

“I only ever did it because I love you, lil bro.”

You pick up the closest weapon to you on the floor, a baseball bat with nails in it. Those words scream in your head, and they’re the fuel to the flame of vengeance and violence inside of you. The part of you that doesn’t care about closure, but revenge instead.   
You can’t hear yourself screaming, but you know you are. You swing the bat across his neck and get him to the ground. You get him under you, and you’re batting in his knees, and then his elbows, and then his chest and face, and you’re smiling. Halfway through it, you’re fucking grinning. The same sadistic grin that he always gave you halfway through your fights. 

You feel bad, but you feel more excited than anything. Finally getting to be the man he always was to you. There’s blood all over the place, his nose is beyond repair and at one point you put a few dent’s into his forehead with the other end of the bat. And into his eyes. His ribs and bones were broken, and even though you couldn’t hear the shatter of them, you felt it.   
You don’t know when you finally stop, and you drop the bat onto the corpse that was the shithole brother. But when you turn around, you see a small child. 

You remember that the coma had lasted two weeks, and suddenly you can hear again, but all you hear is a shrieking wailing. You see the younger you run over to your Bro’s corpse, begging him not to leave him. Because you remember that even though he was the reason you had almost died so many times, that he was also all you had, and all you looked up to. 

And suddenly you’re crying too, dropping to your knees, hiccuping and clawing at your chest, looking up at the little kid, who you’re now crying with, and you want to tell him that he’s safe now, that it’s okay, that everything’s going to be fine now because he’s gone. 

But you know you can’t stay to take care of him, because even though you break everything you ever get, you don’t know if the cycle of abuse would be something else you’re able to break. Despite knowing that you would never, ever do anything your Bro did, despite all of the things you promise yourself, you know you’re still a Strider. 

And a Strider is a terrible thing to be.


End file.
